Your Muppet mistakes

After seeing The Secrets of the Muppets and hearing that Henson's workshops were in New York and London, I assumed that those were the only places that Henson's productions were made (excluding obvious exceptions like The Muppet Movie being made in Hollywood). And now that I think about it, a great deal of Henson productions were made in Canada, yet I don't associate Canada with the Muppets as much. But many of the Muppet specials from the 1970s and 1980s were produced in Canada, even when the Muppets were relatively unknown.

Of course in the 1980s it made a bit of sense to make more Muppet stuff in Canada. Fraggle Rock was produced there, and unlike The Muppet Show and Sesame Street when they began, Fraggle Rock employed many background performers from the start, most of whom were from canada. Making more productions in Canada provided more work for these background performers, and it especially made sense to produce the 30th anniversary special and MFC up in Canada, considering the large amount of Canadian performers and large number of Muppets used in those specials. Of course it is a wonder Henson didn't arrange for his Canadian and England-based performers to perform in the United States more often; The main Muppet performers were based in the US yet were often able to travel to England, Canada, and elsewhere, so why not non-US performers?

I had some misconceptions about The Muppet Show, before I saw any actual episodes and only saw the compilation videos. For example, all of the compilation videos I had seen (both the Playhouse Videos and It's the Muppets!) listed the main eight performers from the later seasons and no other performers, so I assumed those were the only performers on the show. Then I got the Muppet Hits albums and I was confused that the performers credits didn't list Steve Whitmire or Kathy Mullen, but did list John Lovelady and Eren Ozker (I think I thought "Who?"). And the various compilation videos did include clips where those and other performers performed, while the albums did include songs with vocals by Steve Whitmire and Kathy Mullen. It wasn't until I saw the show that I saw that the performer credits weren't the same in every episode (sort of off-topic, but I wonder if any of the Playhouse Video releases featured any performers who weren't on The Muppet Show).

And the Playhouse Videos that I'd seen featured the fifth season version of the closing theme. I was confused when I got the It's the Muppets videos and then the Muppet Hits albums and heard the first version of the closing theme, with no trumpet solo. And that was my favorite part of the closing theme (one thing that's ironic: Lips is among my favorite minor characters and that part of the fifth season theme was my favorite part before I even knew Lips did that solo).

When I first saw the Muppet Babies episode Muppet Babies: The Next Generation, before we got to the scene with Animal as a Yoda parody named Yodie, I thought they had called him Odie. And was expecting the Garfield character to appear. At the time I was unfamiliar with Yoda.

When watching the promo for the Playhouse Video releases, a clip from the English Country Garden segment was shown, and I thought that was part of the linking footage. I first figured it was part of The Muppet Show when the clip was shown in The World of Jim Henson (and it hadn't occured to me that there was no reason the documentary couldn't have shown clips from the linking foootage of any of those videos... after all, the TMS section of the documentary showed clips from The Muppets Go to the Movies and The Fantastic Miss Piggy Show, and a brief clip from Muppet Moments appeared in the 30th anniversary special).

Also, when I first saw the clip of the pigs taking over the show (the first clip in the Playhouse Video promo), I thought one pig said "Thanks for taking over the show!", instead of "Pigs are taking over the show!" And I didn't see it as "sarcasm", so I wondered why they put Kermit in a net and shouted "You'll never get away with this!" And the theme music started playing over a clip of Bobby Benson's Baby Band (was the clip from "Pensylvania 6-5000" or "Tuxedo Junction"? Both clips used the same set), and I thought the Baby Band was playing the theme song in that clip.

You see, I come from Southern Michigan (read: Lutheran country), and learned early on that the “oe” phoneme in German names can be pronounced like a long A, as in Matt Groening. That’s probably why I wasn’t sure how to say it.

The evening 'Fraggle Rock' started on tv here ( '83? ) my Dad said something about The Fraggles being 'the Muppets' cousins'. Now, as a kid I took that literally. For many years I was utterly convinced that The Fraggles were indeed related to The Muppets, and not just in a behind the scenes creative team sense. So, in one episode of 'Fraggle Rock' where Gobo mentioned visiting cousins, I was CONVINCED he was going to see The Muppets.
I never saw 'A Muppet Family Christmas' as a kid, but I'm guessing it would have reinforced that belief 100%.

Back when I first got a VHS copy of The Muppets Take Manhattan, and I had become familiar with some of the celebrities in the film, I thought that Art Carney played the role of the man who showed Kermit to his table at Sardi's. He was real skinney, like Carney was on The Honeymooners, and his hair seemed similar. It took awhile before I knew Art Carney was actually Bernard Crawford... He changed quite a bit between The Honeymooners and MTM (I really was thrown off... He looked bigger and was more serious... was Art Carney ever typecast for his role as Norton? Because I don't know of any other roles Art Carney played besides his roles in The Great Santa Claus Switch).

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Yeah. That really shocked me when I found that out too. I couldn't picture that guy saying, "Hey, Ralphie boy!"

I loved the Muppehow when I was small, and I still do! But, then, I made the dumb mistake of always wondering, "Who is that lady doing Ms. Piggy's voice?" Boy, was I surprised when I found it was actually a man! To this day, I am still shocked!

When I saw the Fraggle Rock episode "Fraggle Wars" for the first time, I thought "why isn't Boober with the other Fraggles?" I don't know why I thought that. I guess they're both dull in a way, but Boober laughs sometimes, so I guess that explains it a little bit.

When I saw the Fraggle Rock episode "Fraggle Wars" for the first time, I thought "why isn't Boober with the other Fraggles?" I don't know why I thought that. I guess they're both dull in a way, but Boober laughs sometimes, so I guess that explains it a little bit.

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It's such a treat to hear Boober genuinely laugh. Part of the reason I love that song from "Invasion of the Toe Ticklers".

I don't know if they should be counted as mistakes as much as messed-up memories, but there's a few episodes of The Muppet Show that I only saw on Nickelodeon once, and not again until they were released on DVD, and had things that I remembered differently.

For example, the John Denver episode has a number of things I don't remember seeing on the Nickelodeon broadcast, like the "Why Can't We be Friends?" number, Gonzo's conversation with John, The Swedish Chef making squirrell stew, and the "Happy Wanderer" number. I read which one was cut on Nickelodeon but can't remember which one it was. For years I had thought The Magic Garden number was the opening number. And when I first saw a brief clip from that in the promo for the Playhouse Video releases, I thought it took place underwater.

Another such mistake/misremembering was the Mr. Bassman number in the Mumenschaz episode. For some reason I had misremembered how it started. I thought the curtaisn raised, we saw a wide shot of the band, and then it cut to a close-up side view of Floyd, as opposed to the screen sliding to a close-up of Floyd.

Since i didn't have Nick at the time, i can't tell you what all of them were, but Nick edited the eps. They were given the full 25 1/2 minute episodes and allowed to edit them however they chose to fit their station's time limit. So the Nick airings were often the first time the UK sketches were shown on US television, but with other scenes cut out. Sometimes they cut one scene, other times they just trimmed smaller parts of several scenes and on occasion moved things around (such as the Rita Moreno ep). So some of those "mistakes" may be just how they aired on Nick.

When I first noticed that the back covers of the "My Sesame Street Home Video" releases had a listing of other videos in the collection, when looking at the title "Count It Higher: Great Music Videos from Sesame Street" I thought the title was just "Count It Higher" and thought the "great music videos from Sesame Street" line was the start of a new section listing videos themed aroudn music (and at the time I hadn't seen any of the videos listed past that point).

Not a "Muppet mistake" per se, but it was a mistake made around my Muppet love...

I was able to read at a very early age (thanks to SST and Electric Co.) - so i often had my stacks of SST puppets around me as i'd act out scenes in SST books. Big Bird's Busy Book was an activity book that had lots of great stuff all throughout (my mom always used the cookie dough recipe from it whenever she made cookies).

Some of the instructions were more geared to adults or older readers. So anytime a character would give an instruction that included the word "etc", i thought that was like an "ahem" sound like the character was clearing their throat.